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Meteor strike in Russia hurts over 500

Sapa-AFP | 15 February, 2013 15:17

Trail of a meteorite crossing the early morning sky above the city of Kamensk-Uralsky February 15, 2013, is seen in this still image taken from video footage from a dashboard journey recorder and obtained by REUTERS TV. Image by: REUTERS TV / REUTERS

A plunging meteor exploded with a blinding flash above central Russia on Friday, setting off a shockwave that shattered windows and hurt over 500 people in an event unprecedented in modern times.

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The extraordinary event brought morning traffic to a sudden halt
in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk as shocked drivers stopped to
watch the falling meteor partially burning up in the lower
atmosphere and light up the sky.

It appeared the meteor's entry into the atmosphere was not
linked to the asteroid 2012 DA 14 which is expected to pass about
27,000 kilometres above the Earth later Friday in an unusually
close approach.

But experts said that the fall of such a large meteor estimated
as weighing dozens of tonnes was extremely rare while the number of
casualties from its burning up around a heavily-inhabited area was
unprecedented.

The emergencies ministry said more than 500 people were injured,
112 of whom have been hospitalised. Windows were blown out by the
shockwave across the city's region with the ministry saying almost
300 buildings were damaged including, schools, hospitals, a zinc
factory and even an ice hockey stadium.

"At 0920 (0320 GMT) an object was observed above Chelyabinsk
which flew by at great speed and left a trail behind. Within two
minutes there were two bangs," regional emergencies official Yuri
Burenko said in a statement.

"The shockwave broke glass in Chelyabinsk and a number of other
towns in the region," he said.

The office of the local governor said in a statement that a
meteorite had fallen into a lake outside the town of Chebakul in
the Chelyabinsk region and television images pointed to a six-metre
(20-foot) hole in the frozen lake's ice.

However it has yet to be finally confirmed if meteorite
fragments made contact with the Earth and there were no reports
that any locals had been hurt directly by a falling piece of
meteorite.

Schools were closed for the day and theatre shows cancelled
across the region after the shock wave blew out windows amid
temperatures as low as minus 18 degrees Celsius (zero degrees
Fahrenheit).

The local postal service said several of its buildings had been
damaged while some television footage showed people with bloodied
faces and at least one child's back covered with blood.

The Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that it
estimated the body to be several metres long and weighing several
dozen tonnes. "It burned up at a height of 30-50 kilometres... but
pieces could have fallen to Earth as meteorites."

The meteor explosion appears to be one of the most stunning
cosmic events above Russia since the 1908 Tunguska Event, when a
massive blast most scientists blame on an asteroid or a comet
impact ripped through Siberia.

"I am scratching my head to think of anything in recorded
history when that number of people have been indirectly injured by
an object like this... it's very, very rare to have human
casualties," Robert Massey, deputy executive secretary of Britain's
Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), told AFP.

But he stressed that he saw "absolutely no connection" between
the Chelyabinsk event and asteroid 2012 DA 14, which was to skim
the Earth later on Friday at a distance of around 17,200 miles
(27,700 kilometres).

With the meteor already becoming a leading trend on Twitter,
locals posted amateur footage on YouTube showing men swearing in
surprise and fright, and others grinding their cars to a halt.

"First I thought it was a plane falling, but there was no sound
from the engine... after a moment a powerful explosion went off,"
said witness Denis Laskov.

"In a lot of the houses on our street the windows were blown
out," he told state television.

The Chelyabinsk region is Russia's industrial heartland, filled
with smoke-chugging factories and other huge facilities that
include a nuclear power plant and the massive Mayak atomic waste
storage and treatment centre.

A spokesman for Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy state
corporation, said that its operations remained unaffected.

The emergencies ministry said radiation levels in the region
also did not change and that 20,000 rescue workers had been
dispatched to help the injured and locate those requiring help.